Comparative Cities Teaching Package (ICPSR 7698)

Comparative Cities is a teaching package designed to
introduce students to analysis of manuscript schedules of the
nineteenth century census for social, urban, family, and demographic
history. The files are designed for use with SPSS. It was initially
developed at Brown University with assistance of a project grant from
the National Endowment for the Humanities. The file is organized to
illustrate contrasts among cities at different stages of
industrialization and the demographic transition in E... (more info)

Comparative Cities is a teaching package designed to
introduce students to analysis of manuscript schedules of the
nineteenth century census for social, urban, family, and demographic
history. The files are designed for use with SPSS. It was initially
developed at Brown University with assistance of a project grant from
the National Endowment for the Humanities. The file is organized to
illustrate contrasts among cities at different stages of
industrialization and the demographic transition in Europe and America:
Pisa, Italy (1841), Amiens, France (1851), Stockport, England (1841 and
1851), and Providence, R.I. (1850, 1865, and 1880). The rural district
around Pisa and part of Providence County are also included. There are
approximately 1400 cases with information for individuals in each of
eleven subfiles. These are random samples from the original 1:10 house
samples for the four places made to permit flexible and economical
student use. Summaries imbedded in the file permit analysis at the
individual, household, or nuclear unit level. There are 142 variables
for each individual. The package also contains a coursebook with
explanation of each variable, a dictionary with occupational titles
that appear in the censuses, course syllabus, and other instructions
for use. The files are being used in the separate ongoing research of
the two principal investigators and should be used for instructional
purposes only. This teaching package can be supplied as two card-image
data files, two files of SPSS instruction cards, and associated printed
documentation. The package has also been updated with several files
designed to be used with microcomputers. Included in the updated
materials are four text files (Contents of Tape, Coursebook,
Explanatory Materials, and Dictionary of Occupational Titles and
Codes), a file of SPSSx data definition statements for use with
PC-SPSSx, and a file of data definition statements for use with the
Consortium's ABC statistical analysis package. Nine separate sub-files,
each derived from the original census data and designed for analysis on
micro-computers which are equipped with PC-SPSSx or ABC, are also
provided. Finally, the package includes two mainframe SPSSx "Export"
files which contain all of the data collected for each city. While
these latter files duplicate the SPSS files contained in the earlier
Comparative Cities package, they have been modified for use with SPSSx.
The original Comparative Cities Teaching Package files can still be
supplied as well. These files are oriented towards use of SPSS Version
9 on mainframe computers.

Access Notes

This study is intended for instructional use, and may be subsets of the original data. Variables and/or cases may have been removed to facilitate
classroom use.

These data are available only to users at ICPSR member institutions. Because you are not
logged in, we cannot verify that you
will be able to download these data.